Google Tries to Ride Angry Birds’ Coattails

Google is hoping to use the Angry Birds to show the power of mobile advertising.

A video posted to YouTube has Rovio’s “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka talking about, among other things, how an ad-based model can work to generate serious bucks. Off camera, Vesterbacka told Google that the company expects that by the end of the year, its ad-supported Angry Birds will be bringing in over $1 million per month. There have been more than five million downloads of the ad-supported Android version to date.

“It seems to be a very good fit,” he said. “We’re very happy with the monetization that provides us.”

Google is using the spot as the first in a series of YouTube videos to tout ways of establishing ad-based mobile businesses. Of course, the Angry Birds lesson is really more one of coming up with a hit game. Create a hit that everyone wants to play and you can find lots of ways to make money. That’s just a truism.

Vesterbacka did throw out a few interesting stats, such as the fact that 80 percent of everyone who downloads Angry Birds also downloads updates when they are available. Also, on just the iPhone version of Angry Birds, Vesterbacka said that there are 65 million minutes per day spent playing the game.

Plus, about four minutes into the video below, Vesterbacka works in a cute plug for the company’s forthcoming line of toys.

Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work

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